be supported if the missions became known. He added, "Somewhere along there we just should have said, 'Hey, ei- ther fight it or quit, but let's not waste all the money and the lives the way we are doing it.' " A year later, Lavelle died, at the age of sixty-two. Patrick and Aloysius Casey discov- ered the story behind the protective- reaction attacks while researching a biog- raphy of a pilot who served under Lavelle. The authorization came from the Oval Office; the Caseys found the evidence that Lavelle had done and continued to do what the President wanted in recently released Nixon White House tapes, and they gave me a copy of their transcripts. On February 3, 1972, President Nixon; Henry Kissinger, the national-security adviser; and Ellsworth Bunker, the Am- bassador to South Vietnam, were dis- cussing the war. "The one thing both General Abrams and I want is . . . au- thority to bomb these SAM sites," Bunker said. Nixon had a solution: "I think pro- tective reaction should include the right to hit SAM sites. I am simply saying that we expand the definition of protective reaction to mean preventive reaction where a SAM site is concerned. . . . Who knows or would say they didn't fire?" It was agreed that Abrams would be told. "N eedless to say," Nixon cautioned, "he is to call all of these things protective re- action." Kissinger worried about a leak to the press. The President said to Bunker, "I want you to tell Abrams when you get back that he is to tell the military not to put out extensive briefings with regard to our military activities. . . . And if it does get out, he is to say it's a protective-reac- tion strike." On June 14th, shortly after my first ar- ticle on the bombings appeared in the Times, Nixon said to Kissinger, "This damned Laird." He was referring to Laird's decision to dismiss Lavelle. 'Why did he even remove him? . . I don't want a man persecuted for doing what he thought was right." Kissinger was quick to criticize the generals: "Of course the military are impossible, too. . . . They turn on each other like rats." Nixon thought that he had been double-crossed. "Laird knows goddam well. . . . I told him, 'I said it's protective reaction.' He winks, he says, '0 h, I understand.' " Kissinger: "Yeah, but Laird is pretty vicious." Twelve days later, Nixon raised his 32 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 26, 2007 concerns again. Kissinger said that Nixon had really not changed the rules, because the first raids, in late 1971, were "not protective reaction in a strict sense, it was a punishment for [Hanoi's] acts and that had to be made clear." He added, "I don't think Lavelle was pushed into anything. I think Lavelle did it on an unauthorized basis." "You do?" the Pres- ident asked. Kissinger continued, "In any event you should stay out of it, Mr. President." Nixon agreed, more or less: 'Well, I suppose. . . they"-the Dem- ocrats-"figure, Lavelle, it is just an- other card [like] the bugging of the [Democratic] National Committee." Finally, on October 23rd, Nixon told General Alexander Haig, Kissinger's dep- uty, "All this goddam crap about Lavelle. I feel sorry for that fellow because you and I know we did approve to Laird of 'pro- tective reaction' as being very liberal." He added, "He never would have had to fal- sifY any records if we had not had rules out that we were not to bomb the North." We have become inured to the vulgar- ity, deceit, and distrust that mark the Nixon tapes. But the Lavelle incident has a special resonance: in the midst of a di- sastrous and unpopular war, a President and his closest confederates authorized actions in violation of both the rules and their own stated policies. We'll never know exactly what has been said in George W. Bush's Oval Office, but there are parallels with the Nixon White House. One who has come to understand them is Robert Pursley, the Air Force lieutenant general who was Laird's mili- tary assistant. Laird, who will publish a memoir next year, insists, "I did not know they were breaking the rules or lying about coördinates." Pursley said last week that it was Laird's office that noticed the increase in bombing missions over North Vietnam and questioned the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the authority used to justifY it, which led to the Pentagon's first, inter- nal inquiry. Pursley also told me, "I be- lieve Lavelle was guilty of poor judgment, but Nixon enhanced the issue by saying, 'Do what you need to do.' That's what's wrong with us today. The President is just diminishing what holds the military together by saying forget the ethics- we'll do whatever we have to do. It's the stuff from which Walter Reed and Abu Ghraib are born." -Seymour M Hersh WIND ON CAPITOL HILL BULLETS O rdinarily, few jobs in the legal world are as exalted and exhilarating as being a United States Attorney. But last week Tim Griffin, the recently installed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, was not enjoying his new as- signment. "It's no fun being me right now," he said over his cell phone from Arkansas. Griffin is one of eight U.S. At- torneys whose recent appointments by the President are at the center of a politi- cal controversy that has overtaken Attor- ney General Alberto Gonzales and other top Bush Administration officials. They stand accused of manipulating the prose- cutorial arm of the federal government for political purposes, and then mislead- ing Congress about it. Griffin complained that his Democratic opponents had un- fairly accused him of political partisan- ship. "I worked in a campaign, like a lot of people," he said. "But now my job is not partisan, so I am not partisan." Griffin, who is thirty-eight, was ap- pointed U.S. Attorney in December. A former research director for the Republi- can National Committee and an aide to Karl Rove, the White House political ad- viser, Griffin had relatively little prosecu- torial experience. Nonetheless, e-mails between Justice Department and White House officials show that Bush Adminis- tration officials pushed out Griffin's well- respected predecessor, H. E. (Bud) Cum- mins, to make room for Griffin, in part because "it was important to . . . Karl [Rove], etc." Griffin did not undergo a confirmation process before the Senate Ju- diciary Committee, as is required by the Constitution. Instead, the President ap- pointed him under a little-noticed provi- sion of the 2006 renewal of the Patriot Act, which allows for the indefinite ap- pointment of an interim U.S. Attorney without Senate approval. Ostensibly, the provision was intended to be used in situ- ations where national security might be at stake, such as the death of a sitting U.S. Attorney resulting from a terrorist attack. As early as last summer, Justice De-